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The Hearth
Excerpt from https://www.thehearth.ca/archived/index.php
Dair na Coille celebrates
the arrival of blessings, life-forces, and spirits,
brought on the West Wind and nestled in the trees until
each new blessing, new life, and new spirit emerges
in due course in the months ahead.
On New Year’s
Day, the head of the household would go out and get
a small twig from a fruit-bearing tree and bring it
into the house saying “Fas is gnaths is toradh”,
meaning ‘Growth, tradition, and abundance’,
so that his family could share in the blessing of the
new emerging life. As far as I know, this is all that
remains of this custom. We are not told where the blessings
and spirits come from exactly, or who sends them, however,
we can interpret the symbolism that is still present
in this simple custom.
The new spirits are brought in on the
West Wind, which, apart from being wonderfully animistic,
says something important. The wind is a vehicle for
vitality; we affirm this fact with every breath we take,
but the West, the direction of sunset, death, and the
ancestors, is a direction of endings. So these newly
arriving spirits come from the place unto which departing
spirits go. The spirits are not just coming, the spirits
are returning! Renewed!
Michael Newton suggests in his handbook
of the Scottish Gaelic World that the individual trees
imbued in Dair na Coille are a source of life,
much as the Tree of Life is the ultimate source of life.
While he does not elaborate, it is as though each tree
is an allomorph of the World tree, and the spirits are
like the bird/souls of many shamanic cultures nestled
in the world tree waiting to be born. While the custom
does not mention birds explicitly, bird/souls are mentioned
repeatedly in Celtic mythology, both pagan and Christian.
Many deities travel in the form of
birds, or have birds associated with them, omens and
auguries are taken from the flight of birds, and the
soul’s ecstatic flight is compared to the flight
of birds (as implied by the feathered headdress of Mug
Roth and the tugen or feathered cloak said
to have been worn by the druids). In addition to the
many mortal and supernatural beings who take on bird
forms in the mythic literature, we have, in the Altus
Prosator, the Vision of Adomnán, and the writings
of Augustinus Hibernicus, early Christian examples of
human souls, before or after their lives here among
us, depicted as birds in the Tree of Life.
Returning to the custom itself, there
is a great deal of significance in the householder’s
ritual gathering of a small twig, which is brought in
with the saying “Fas is gnaths is toradh”,
‘Growth, tradition, and abundance’. This
speaks clearly of continuance and a good life. Interestingly,
toradh means not only abundance; it is also
the vital essence of persons, animals, plants, food
and drink.
That the spirits return on December
31st and the household brings their blessings into the
house on New Year’s Day is also important. While
January 1st was not significant until well into the
Christian period, it does bear a variety of customs,
such as Hogmanay, associated with auspicious new beginnings
for the year ahead. That the Dair na Coille blessings of growth, tradition, and abundance come out
of the west with the returning spirits connects them
with the ancestors – it acknowledges that these
coming blessings are intimately tied with what has gone
before.
Beyond the implicit cyclical, and possibly
reincarnational, motif, Dair na Coille heralds
the blessing of one’s ancestors upon the living
family. These blessings, coming from the west, link
this midwinter custom to ancestor veneration; something
we know to have played a significant role in Celtic
religion and Pan-Indo-European religions (both with
and without reincarnation beliefs). This might be why
there are no deities or other spirits named in association
with Dair na Coille. While there are many gods
and powers associated with the many aspects of our world,
one’s ancestors are perhaps the only powers whose
vested interests never run counter to the wellbeing
of one’s household.
Samhain is the feast of the ancestors,
but the role of ancestor veneration in Celtic religion
is not restricted to a single feast, especially with
regard to matters concerning the wellbeing of the household
and the family. The symbolism of Dair na Coille is rich and beautiful, yet quiet and understated. This
simple and barely ritualized belief has a great depth
of meaning and points to a momentous event in the cycle
of the seasons.
As January 1st is not meaningful in
my tradition of Celtic paganism, I celebrate Dair
na Coille either at the cross-quarter holiday of
Midwinter (Yule) or on the first visible crescent after
Midwinter – the first time in the Celtic year
when the sun and moon are both increasing – and
moving it a few days to New Year, in either direction,
does not impact its symbolism as an imbuement in the
middle of the darkest season.
Regardless of which day one celebrates
Dair na Coille, New Year’s Day, Winter
Solstice, the first visible crescent after Midwinter,
or some other relevant and significant day, the simple
acknowledgment of the souls returning and preparing
for spring and the new life it will bring, should happen
in darkness, in counter point to the boisterous defiance
of winter, which is celebrated by decorating with mistletoe,
holly and other evergreens, or listening for the brave
wren, who unlike other birds that sing for a mate in
spring, sings with joyous strength against the dark,
all winter long.
Though there are solar themes associated
with mid-winter, the three themes discussed in this
article – Dair na Coille as an imbuement
in darkness; defiance of winter as shown by the holly
and the wren; and the birth of the hidden child of promise
– are not solar themes. They happen when the sun
is at her weakest, and they happen independently of
any of the goddesses who personify the sun in Celtic
mythologies. There is a lot going on in the dead of
winter, and I invite you to celebrate both the overt
and the subtle parts of the season, and incubate that
knowledge so that you may warm and be warmed by it until
all re-emerges with the light born of springtime.
New Souls Come In The Darkness
stretching back, reaching forward,
embracing our nows.